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Spouses Sidelined in Bids to Get on Fast Track for Green Card

More than 2,000 foreign spouses of United States citizens who paid hundreds of dollars in fees to get on what they thought was a 90-day government fast track to a green card interview learned this week that they were stuck in the typical two-year backlog, lawyers said yesterday.

A spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington confirmed that the eight-month-old fast-track program was halted in New York last week. He said it was continuing indefinitely in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and Dallas to try to eliminate paperwork backlogs.

But the spokesman, Christopher Bentley, and the lawyers, members of the New York chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, gave different accounts of the program's nature and disagreed on whether it was working.

Mr. Bentley said the pilot program was dropped as scheduled last Thursday because it was not meeting its two goals: to handle applications within 90 days and to detect "a higher incidence of fraud" among marriages. He said no refunds were due because the program was simply an internal management tool, and not a guarantee that applicants would be on a fast track.

"All the pilot did was it allowed our staff to handpick cases from the general pool," Mr. Bentley said. "There wasn't a higher incidence of fraud, and we also found we weren't able to turn around the applications within 90 days, because the background check would not come back in time."

But Marcia Needleman, co-chairwoman of the government liaison committee of the immigration lawyers' association, disputed that version. She said immigration officials announced at a meeting last fall that the program was being extended indefinitely, and that it was halted retroactively only on Monday.

"There was nothing handpicked," she said. "If you filed a marriage-based case in New York after April, it was on an expedited track." And it was so successful, she said, that lawyers advised clients stuck in the waiting list to refile, even though it meant paying fees again, because in most cases approval was granted within four months, at the interview.

Matthew S. Dunn, chairman of the New York chapter of the lawyers association, said it was up to the government to end the program, but criticized the lack of notice. Many applicants now have expiring work authorizations and travel permits.

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Those already scheduled for interviews may still be handled on the fast track, but those who applied in December and January -- roughly 2,000 couples -- can expect a two-year wait instead.

Among them are Charlie Fellowes, 52, and Carol Brys, 44, who had a very 21st-century courtship in 2003: a trans-Atlantic meeting over the Internet, love at first sight at Kennedy Airport and a wedding in Manhattan eight months later. In contrast, said Mr. Fellowes, a British graphic designer, the immigration service seems stuck in the 19th century.

In December, 14 months after they applied for Mr. Fellowes's green card, the couple paid a second set of application and legal fees of $1,500 when they heard about the fast track from a friend.

"The rug was pulled out from under me," Mr. Fellowes said. "The U.S. government has basically taken my money and said, 'Well, tough.' And as an alien I can't really jump up and down about that -- I don't have a congressman yet."

His Brooklyn-born wife, Ms. Brys, who works in corporate communications in Manhattan, said they would have to cancel a visit to France to visit Mr. Fellowes' 4-year-old daughter and might have to manage on her salary for a while if his work permit cannot be renewed in time.

"I'm just appalled that they can just stop the program like that and not grandfather the people whose money they've already taken," Ms. Brys said. But Mr. Bentley, the government spokesman, said such clients had only their lawyers to blame. "There was never a guarantee," he said.

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A version of this article appears in print on February 3, 2005, on Page B00003 of the National edition with the headline: Spouses Find Fast Track to Green Card Closed. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe